


on earth

by Luminance



Category: Hiveswap
Genre: Breaking the Fourth Wall, Dissociation, Panic Attacks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-09
Updated: 2018-12-09
Packaged: 2019-09-15 02:18:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16924671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Luminance/pseuds/Luminance
Summary: This feeling of safety and homeliness you haven't felt in a long time, it's cathartic really. That is until you realize you're not really there and never were.





	on earth

The warm air caresses your sides and ghosts along your skin with the fronds of tall grass in the field. The sun oh- your single bright non-vaporizing sun is familiar and comforting. Wildflowers whisper secrets that the wind carries and forgets, damn you haven't felt this poetic in a while, you guess being home again makes you do that. This feeling of safety and homeliness you haven't felt in a long time, it's cathartic really. You move to run a hand down one of the blades of grass curled against your thigh only to realize the hand wasn't available.

Right, there's Daraya, who has her hand clutched around yours like a lifeline as she stares somehow more starry-eyed than you at the new surroundings and is sitting criss-cross applesauce right next to you. You give her hand a comforting squeeze, lots of new sensory stuff and sights, you know exactly how overwhelming it is.

You don't think she processes the action, or is really aware of the fact you're holding her hand anyways. She doesn't seem entirely there at the moment, but that's okay you can wait as long as she needs to acclimate to the setting. Patience is key with your friends as it has always been, and that's okay.

"It's so," Daraya starts, her voice careful and far much softer than usual, lacking it's spunk, the phrase is held in the air a little long but doesn't get anymore traction leaving ambient noise to fill that space again.

You offer words like peaceful, different, yellow, and weird, she laughs hoarsely. You think you can spot jade tinted tears gathering at the corner of her eyes but she scrubs them away far too quickly for you to confirm that. She does sniffle after that but covers it up by clearing her throat.

"Is it like this everywhere?"

You say you wish it was, this is probably the nicest place the two of you could have landed out every where else on earth. It by no means is no Niagara Falls or Golden Gate Bridge but it's just the right amount relaxed and secluded to give a good idea of what the better places of peaceful earth are like. The whole planet isn't great, but this is one of the nice things about it.

She moves her other hand hesitantly through the grass, experimentally, until it eventually lands on a wildflower, you could totally go on about the poetic meaning of it if the flower didn't happen to be a dandelion. An overgrown weed that's pretty to the standard of store-bought flowers as a kid, until you realize it is just that, a weed. It still is a pleasant sight between the more visibly ugly growths in the ground that fill the space between wild grass. It's a filler plant, a substitute, a fake, or really it's up to interpretation what you think of it.

Did Alternia have its own dandelions? You only really remember the vicious ones that could either maim you or had acid strong enough to make you a stain on the ground within seconds, then there's the one plant you looked for with Vikare. You feel a little sad remembering him, you never did end up hanging out again much less talking within the time you met him and the time you spent getting here. Where did you park the ship again?

"Is it okay to pick these from the ground?" Daraya asks you bringing you back from your thoughts, and you give her an affirmative nod. You assure her it won't do anything except shrivel up and die later after she's pulled it from it's spot. 

She stares at you a little while longer before turning back to the dandelion held between two claws and then delicately plucks it from the ground. She lifts it up to her eye-level, which is significantly higher than your own despite her not being incredibly tall in troll terms. She is still tall. There's one of those tiny red, unidentifiable, particle-bugs crawling up the stem and once Daraya notices that and her gaze moves to it, she carefully moves her finger away from it as a precaution.

How did you rebuild your ship anyways? The only people you can think of that would be willing to help and have the skillset to do so would be Vikare, then maybe Mallek. Yea not really Mallek, just Vikare but even then Vikare was fiercely against space-crafts and a passionate advocate for aviation. Hadn't he plundered most of what was left of your ship anyways?

You move to turn around where you assume the ship to be and shift yourself so you can look further but all you can see is the yellow of the wild grass with interspersed wildflowers.

Daraya hisses through her teeth and manages to shake you from your daze again, it's a frustrated hiss. She rests the hand that had been held out on her knee and looks down," Is it fucked up if I already feel homesick?"

You tell her it's not, you missed earth when you left it but found Alternia was worse than it, despite the things you hate about your home planet it is not as bad as Alternia. You only had one life to live on earth, you weren't a goddamn purrbeast with nine hundred lives on earth, you only had to know what was in front of you. You never had to die over and over until you successfully made a friendship the right way. Making friends wasn't your only reason to live, and the feeling is satisfyingly faint now.

"I- What," Daraya's words are caught in her throat and she stares at you strangely, ah you said that out loud, then that means this isn't,"-What are you talking about?"

You let the words spill, its water realizing there's a hole in the dam, you tell her that you remember dying over and over. You remember, you know, every possibility you took with every friend. You remember Tirona's impalement, you remember Zebruh's dismemberment and the shower of blue blood that stained your skin, you remember Fozzer. You remember dying constantly; laying splayed across the ground every fragile bone in your pathetic human body broken, and the warm taste of copper in your mouth. You know the abandoned mall she had burned alive in, you know all about the high-blood sized shops there. You know you've gone offshore from the river you follow and that you've fallen so far from the track you're meant to ride.

Daraya pulls her hand from your own but you don't really feel it, you don't really realize how sharp your breathing is and feel the sweat slicked to the back of your neck. You see Daraya settle in front of you but you don't really compute it. Her hand hesitantly settles on your shoulder, a base on acid, a neutralizer, your vision stops swimming and you really look up at her.

The genuine concern and confusion on her face makes you feel terribly guilty, it's telling expression that says she doesn't know what to make of what you're saying.

You tell her it's okay, and repeat that a few times as if to affirm the fact with yourself, you tell her this isn't real and that you're not actually on earth, and that's fine. She stares and you don't feel anything except hollow, "I don't understand half the shit you're saying-" You expected that "-We are on earth right now, unless you decided we'd land somewhere else, but still you're obviously not okay with the situation."

You tell her that's fine and already knew she wouldn't believe you. She has no reason to.

"You.. Know about the mall, and I very clearly never took you there," Daraya states slowly as you drag a distracted hand through the fake grass that's growing on the not-earth that you're somehow on. That's funny.

"Even if this doesn't feel real right now, or isn't, it's not very smart to waste the moment like this," She finishes and, it's actually good advice.

You lower yourself down onto the grass and uncross your legs as Daraya scoots over for you to do so. You close your eyes and take in a deep breath and taste the air, feel the dry grass crinkle beneath, hear a bug chirp somewhere nearby, see the blue sky above you, and with the feeling of unreality festering in the back of your mind, you decide:

"Yea, guess I will."

**Author's Note:**

> hi im finally involving myself w/ the hiveswap/homestuck fandom what is up my dudes. this is also... the first complete writing i'm posting on ao3, hopefully it's okay!  
> i had a 2 day long depression after daraya's bad end because it resonated with me so much, and i just love 4th wall breaking bullshit of friendsim so much. i hope daraya isn't too ooc in this?  
> the setting is sort of inspired [by this lovely drawing by M0nam3 on twitter](https://twitter.com/M0nam3/status/1071503191492255744)


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